Listening to Black African Psychologists’ Experiences of Social and Academic Inclusion: Incorporating Indigenous Knowledge Systems into the Curriculum

The aim of the current study was to explore Black African registered and intern psychologists’ experiences of academic and social inclusion during their professional training. In particular, the study examined how and if indigenous knowledge systems (IKS) were part of the curriculum. The participants’ experiences of social and cultural inclusion during professional training were also explored. Fourteen registered and intern psychologists participated in the study: 10 females and four males. Purposive and snowball sampling were used. Data were collected through in-depth interviews and were analysed using thematic analysis. The majority of the participants expressed a deep sense of academic and social exclusion during their training. They indicated that there was little coverage of indigenous knowledge systems in their training, with limited or no exposure to psychological perspectives that derive from Africentric or African-centred theoretical, epistemological or axiological frameworks. They detailed the challenges they experienced due to the complex group/racial dynamics between the black and white students, where the majority of the training staff are white. Another challenge was the use of English as the language of instruction, both in terms of their understanding of psychological concepts and their ability to translate these concepts into practice. This resulted in young psychologists experiencing difficulties with their professional identity during and after training. The paper discusses these findings and makes recommendations for the meaningful incorporation of indigenous knowledge systems (IKS), into professional training

Ethical issues evolving from patients’ perspectives on compulsory screening for syphilis and voluntary screening for cervical cancer in Kenya

BACKGROUND: Public health aims to provide universal safety and progressive opportunities to populations to realise their highest level of health through prevention of disease, its progression or transmission. Screening asymptomatic individuals to detect early unapparent conditions is an important public health intervention strategy. It may be designed to be compulsory or voluntary depending on the epidemiological characteristics of the disease. Integrated screening, including for both syphilis and cancer of the cervix, is a core component of the national reproductive health program in Kenya. Screening for syphilis is compulsory while it is voluntary for cervical cancer. Participants’ perspectives of either form of screening approach provide the necessary contextual information that clarifies mundane community concerns. METHODS: Focus group discussions with female clients screened for syphilis and cancer of the cervix were conducted to elicit their perspectives of compulsory and voluntary screening. The discussions were audiotaped, transcribed and thematic content analysis performed manually to explore emerging ethics issues. RESULTS: The results indicate that real ethical challenges exist in either of the approaches. Also, participants were more concerned about the benefits of the procedure and whether their dignity is respected than the compulsoriness of screening per se. The implication is for the policy makers to clarify in the guidelines how to manage ethical challenges, while at the operational level, providers need to be judicious to minimize potential harms participants and families when screening for disease in women. CONCLUSIONS: The context for mounting screening as a public health intervention and attendant ethical issues may be more complex than hitherto perceived. Interpreting emerging ethics issues in screening requires more nuanced considerations of individuals’ contextual experiences since these may be contradictory to the policy position. In considering mounting screening for Syphilis and cervical cancer as a public heal intervention, the community interests and perspectives should be inculcated into the program. Population lack of information on procedures may influence adversely the demand for screening services by the individuals at risk or the community as a collective agent

Incorporating African Indigenous Healing into the Counselling Services in Tertiary Institutions: A Preliminary Exploration

The study explored how a tertiary institution was responding to the challenge to meet the mental health needs of students from traditional African backgrounds. The study explored the unique contribution of a traditional healing service that was availed to the students. Collaboration between the traditional healer, and psychologically trained counsellors, and the obstacles towards integration, were also explored. A qualitative research design was used. Data were collected by means of individual interviews and focus group discussions. Thirty-five, purposefully chosen stakeholders participated: African undergraduate and post-graduate students, student counsellors, leaders of the student services division, and a traditional diviner (isangoma). The findings indicate that the campus-based traditional healer specialized in treating spiritual illnesses and students’ family identity issues. All participants identified the traditional healer as an indispensable member of an interdisciplinary health care team. Infrastructural and ethical/logical issues pose a major challenge towards integration

Culture and the self in moral and ethical decision-making: a dialogical approach.

Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2003.This study investigated isiZulu-speakers' conceptions of morality. The relationship between concepts of the self and morality was also explored, as were influences of gender, family and community on moral reasoning. Fifty-two participants of both genders were interviewed. The sample was drawn from urban, peri-urban and rural areas in KwaZulu-Natal. The participants were invited to tell a story involving a moral dilemma they had experienced in their lives. The resulting narratives were analyzed using an adapted version of the Relational Method, an analytic procedure developed by Gilligan and her colleagues (e.g. Brown & Gilligan, 1991) to analyze narratives of real life conflict. Respondents considered morality to be a state of connection or equilibrium between the person, other people, and his or her social milieu. Connection is characterized by caring, just and respectful relationships among people and everything to which they stand in relation. Immorality, which is characterized by relationships devoid of care, justice and respect, results from a breakdown in social and communal relationships. Conceptions of morality were found to be dependent on respondents' understanding of the self. The view that morality is characterised by connection was associated mainly with the communal or familial self. However, tensions were also noted between competing concepts of the self within the person, namely the communal and independent selves. These tensions complicated respondents' choices in the face of moral conflict. Gender was also found to influence moral reasoning: in the face of moral dilemmas involving gender, men were concerned with the preservation of their masculine identities, while women found themselves positioned powerlessly by culturally defined narratives of femininity. These results are discussed with reference to traditional African philosophical frameworks and dialogical theory. The implications of the study to psychological theory, social science research ethics and health-related intervention policies are highlighted

Instructional leadership practices of secondary school principals in the context of multiple deprivations in Umlazi District: a multiple case study.

Doctor of Philosophy in Education. University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban 2017.The study reported in this document was conceptualised and conducted as a research project towards a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) degree. The study focused on exploring instructional leadership practices of six secondary school principals (three from rural and three from township secondary schools) in the context of multiple deprivations in Umlazi District, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. Furthermore, it aimed at exploring how the enactments of the generally successful instructional leadership practices were adapted by school principals to multiple deprived contexts. Adaptive leadership and instructional leadership theories underpinned this research study. Methodologically, the study was underpinned by interpretivist paradigm and adopted a qualitative multiple case design. Semi-structured interviews, documents reviews and observations were used to generate data which was thematically analysed. The findings of the study suggest that multiple deprivation contexts impacted on the ways principals understood and enacted instructional leadership in their schools. The schools were overwhelmed by different technical and adaptive challenges emanating from different forms of deprivations. Values, beliefs, knowledge and experiences that leaders possessed, in varying degrees, shaped their understandings of instructional leadership and their practices. These findings affirm the notion that instructional leadership, more specifically in multiple deprived contexts, is a complex and dynamic construct containing plurality of factors and perspectives that shape its nature. The findings also affirm the appropriateness of viewing personal characteristics of principals and contextual factors as significant to understanding how principals exercise educational leadership. The study has shown that the principals were practicing Ubuntu inclined instructional leadership

Exploring instructional leadership practices of school principals : a case study of three secondary schools in Umbumbulu circuit.

Thesis (M.Ed.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2012.There are substantive external demands for improved learner achievement, particularly in secondary schools, and increasingly, principals have to bear the pressures that accompany these demands. Instructional leadership concept is being advocated one of the approaches that school leaders may consider in order to promote a culture of teaching and learning within their schools. Therefore a qualitative case study was undertaken to explore instructional leadership practices of three secondary school principals in Umbumbulu Circuit. The focus of the study was based on the assumption that principals were instructional leaders as it was the expectation of government policy. The study therefore, did not seek to find out if principals in the study were indeed instructional leaders, but it sought to understand the manner in which they practicalised this expectation. In short, the study sought to gain an insight into how secondary school principals in this area enacted instructional leadership and why they enacted it the way they did. Three schools were selected among those schools that had experienced drastic improvement in their matric results in the past five years or so. The research design employed was qualitative and semi-structured interviews with three principals and three educators. These interviews were audio taped and transcribed for analysis. The results indicated that principals enacted instructional leadership practices by (a) sharing vision among members of the school (b) monitoring instructions (c) encouraging professional development of their teaching staff (d) ensuring that instructional time was not interrupted (e) furnishing professional materials and resources to the teachers (f) monitoring and discussion assessment issues with the teachers (g) recognising and rewarding good performance and (h) preparing and sustaining learning environment that is conducive to teaching and learning. The main aim was to enhance teaching and learning in the schools as these principals strongly believed that it was their responsibility to do so

Editorial

The papers in this special edition contribute to our understanding of African indigenous knowledge systems in mental health, African literature, and education. They also point towards an urgent need to engage critically with the knowledge-power matrix (Quijano 2007) and to introduce new epistemologies and worldviews into our curricula. This calls for an inclusive paradigm that not only recognizes the Other, with whom one needs to engage with on an equal basis (Nabudere 2011), but also the understanding that there are diverse ways to the market place, as Olawole (1997) teaches us. We hereby conclude by calling for an interdisciplinary approach towards the study of African indigenous knowledge systems, as it is evident that AIKS cannot be meaningfully pursued while one is located within one discipline. African universities and African communities in general have a major role to play in developing AIKS so that it becomes part and parcel of global world knowledge. Although AIKS is part of the global dialogue on what constitutes international knowledge, in the first instance, it needs to be salvaged from marginalization, so that it can enter the dialogue about universal knowledge, as an equal partner

Construction of self as a principal : meanings gleaned from narratives of novice school principals

It is assumed that individuals’ cognitions of who they are in a particular social structure influence their behaviour in that space. Likewise, school principals’ cognition of who they are in schools as social structures influences how they behave as leaders. In this article, we use the role identity theory as a framework to analyse novice principals’ narratives of lived experiences to understand how they construct themselves as principals in schools and how these constructions influence their execution of leadership. Positioned within the interpretivist paradigm, we adopted the narrative inquiry methodology to engage with the lived experiences of 3 purposively selected novice principals from the Pinetown district in KwaZulu-Natal. The narrative interview was employed to generate field texts, which were subsequently analysed using 2 methods: narrative analysis and analysis of narratives. From our analysis of field texts, 4 themes explaining how the participating novice principals construct themselves as school principals were identified; these themes are: a leader as a learner, re-establishing oneself as a leader, spanning boundaries, and leading to inspire. From these themes, we conclude that a principal’s conception of self is dynamic and is a blend of multiple meanings generated prior to becoming a principal and meanings generated during the principalship tenure.http://www.sajournalofeducation.co.zahj2022Education Management and Policy Studie

Are men universally more dismissing than women? Gender differences in romantic attachment across 62 cultural regions

The authors thank Susan Sprecher (USA), Del Paulhus (Canada), Glenn D. Wilson (England), Qazi Rahman (England), Alois Angleitner (Germany), Angelika Hofhansl (Austria), Tamio Imagawa (Japan), Minoru Wada (Japan), Junichi Taniguchi (Japan), and Yuji Kanemasa (Japan) for helping with data collection and contributing significantly to the samples used in this study.Gender differences in the dismissing form of adult romantic attachment were investigated as part of the International Sexuality Description Project—a survey study of 17,804 people from 62 cultural regions. Contrary to research findings previously reported in Western cultures, we found that men were not significantly more dismissing than women across all cultural regions. Gender differences in dismissing romantic attachment were evident in most cultures, but were typically only small to moderate in magnitude. Looking across cultures, the degree of gender differentiation in dismissing romantic attachment was predictably associated with sociocultural indicators. Generally, these associations supported evolutionary theories of romantic attachment, with smaller gender differences evident in cultures with high–stress and high–fertility reproductive environments. Social role theories of human sexuality received less support in that more progressive sex–role ideologies and national gender equity indexes were not cross–culturally linked as expected to smaller gender differences in dismissing romantic attachment.peer-reviewe